


The transformative character in stories or spinning a tale - Once Upon a Time & Rumplestilskin

by shadowkat67



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Criticism, Episode Related, Fairy Tale Elements, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Meta, Multi, Reviews, Snow White Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22420810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: The reason stories, oral narratives, variations, et al fascinate is because of the "transformative" nature of stories. Stories can transform the teller and listener. The teller or spinner of a story is in a way a Rumplestilskin - enfolding the listener or reader into his/her world...and changing them as a result.  More so when the story resonates in your brain and more importantly your gut, you can in fact become reborn. Some stories transform our culture or comment on it - as do their variations, shifting from one culture to the next.
Kudos: 1
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	The transformative character in stories or spinning a tale - Once Upon a Time & Rumplestilskin

The reason stories, oral narratives, variations, et al fascinate is because of the "transformative" nature of stories. Stories can transform the teller and listener. The teller or spinner of a story is in a way a Rumplestilskin - enfolding the listener or reader into his/her world...and changing them as a result. More so when the story resonates in your brain and more importantly your gut, you can in fact become reborn. Some stories transform our culture or comment on it - as do their variations, shifting from one culture to the next.

The variations of **Snow White** for example? The basic structure or framework of the tale is the same - Snow is on the run from the Evil Queen (who in Jungian terms could be interpreted as her own anima or older self - a less attractive more powerful version, jealous of the younger self.). In some variations of the tale - the Evil Queen hates her because she is fairer than the Queen, and the Queen is jealous. In other's? The father favored Snow over his wife, the Queen, who is Snow's step-mother. In some the Queen is actually Snow's mother and she's jealous of her husband's relationship with her own daughter. In still others, more modern versions, such as the two movie versions coming out in 2012, it may well be a competition for power - the father is dead, the Queen is the step-mother/ruler, and Snow is the true heir. And in my mother's favorite fairy tale - Snow White and Rose Red - there is no Evil Queen but a frightening Bear, who is really a man or Prince who has been cursed. There's always a curse in the fairy tale, something the protagonist must puzzle out. In Snow White - the curse is sleep, which requires a kiss, in Snow White and Rose Red - its the Prince who is cursed. The Grimm's version has the beauty aspect, but not all versions do. What all have in common though - is a transformation at the end. Good over evil, or merely love over adversity.

 **Once Upon A Time** (OUAT) doesn't appear to go that route - here she's destroyed the Queen's life, we aren't quite told how - except that it has to do with the loss of someone or something dear to the Queen. Also in some versions - Snow finds the dwarves and she is like a housekeeper, cook and mother to them. Here - she is supporting herself, and doing the work - stealing from the Queen much like Robin Hood. They've blended in another tale. There is, by the way, no accurate or right version or true one. That's the appeal of folktales, legends, myths, and fairy tales or the oral narrative - passed around, it changes to fit the needs and perspective of each teller. The Victorians focused on sexuality or repressed sexuality - seeking through their stories to understand their own morals and cultural views. Disney focused on the loss of innocence or betrayal of innocence. And in recent times, we've had a return to the Victorian themes, as well as politically correct versions. Other's focus on the horror elements of the tales - or survival theme.

In Rumplestilskin...the lead character according to The Annotated Grimm - pp.256-258:

> Rumplestilskin is almost universally known in cultures that depend on spinning for the garments they wear. Spinning, according to the German philosopher [Walter Benjamin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin), who wrote an [essay about old-fashioned storytelling](https://shadowkat.dreamwidth.org/slought.org/files/downloads/events/SF_1331-Benjamin.pd), produces more than textiles - it is also the breeding ground for texts, creating the endless stretch of time that demands relief through storytelling. Well into the nineteenth century, spinning and storytelling were powerfully associated, as in a German calendar of 1850, quoted by [  
>  Ruth B Bottigheimer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_B._Bottigheimer) : "Father's smoking his pipe, mother's sitting and spinning, Grandma's telling about nixie and elfenkind, About Thumbling and Snow-White and about the magic bear.  
> 

-The Annotated Brother's Grimm - [Maria Tatar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Tatar)

In Rumplestilskin - the Miller claims his daughter can spin straw into gold, but in reality she can't. The king marries her thinking she can do this - but she is trapped in a lie.  
So she goes to Rumplestilskin who does it for her. He spins the tale. A fairy tale version of Eli Gould from say The Good Wife. Makes it work. In exchange for something else. It's never for free in the story. And in some versions, the only likable character is Rumplestilskin who is not always portrayed as the demon that he is in the Grimm version. The tale changes. As does the name of the title character. He is Tom Tit Tot in the British version, Gilitruitt in Iceland, Ricdin-Ricdon in France, and Tambutoe in African-American folklore.

> [Rumplestilskin] is a tale that thematizes the labor that gives birth to storytelling, suggesting in turn that there is an even exchange between the life-giving labors of the queen and the life-saving labors of the diminutive gnome. Spinning straw to gold, Rumplestilskin is less demonic helper than agent of transformation, a figure who becomes heroic in his power to help someone save face and to demonstrate compassion. Is it any wonder that many versions (Not the Grimm Version) of this story show him as a sprightly figure who hightails it out of the palace on a spoon rather than as a vicious gnome who tears himself in two when his name is discovered?

Watching _Once Upon a Time_ (OUAT) made me realize that the character may be interpreted with more complexity than we see in the Grimm's version. Note - the Grimm's versions are often "German" or the Germanic take on the tale - representative of the views and fears and hopes of that culture at that time. It's why there are so many variances. Much like the various adaptations of the tales now, or even say Shakespeare. When a story falls into the consciousness of the people, and gets retold by them, it changes, twists and turns. We see this in fanfic representations of a TV show like Buffy or a continuation of a series of Books such as Harry Potter.

In OUAT - the character of Rumplestilskin, aka Mr. Gold, is not clear-cut. He knows who Emma Swan is, and he deliberately procures Emma's son for the Queen, well aware of the effects.  
Just as he creates the transformative curse that takes the fairy tale characters including himself into the real world. Each thing he does is in exchange for something else that better's himself. In exchange for information on how to end or cancel the curse - he asks for the name of the child that he knows will cancel it. In exchange for the information on how to enact the curse, he requests a better life for himself, an estate, and one more minor thing - that the Queen grant any wish he has as long as he says "Please". This is in keeping with the tranformative nature of the character...a character who transforms the situation of the protagonist in the story, but always with a price.

Often in the tale of Rumplestilskin that price is the first born child or first child. This is the case in most fairy tales. In the tale of the farmer and his wife - the evil witch takes their first born child and curses them with infertility, along with their entire line, because they stole from her garden. The child she takes is Rapunzel. The Evil Queen in OUAT  
adopts the child of Emma Swan, who in turn is the lost child of Snow White. The child lost in the forest that must find it's way home - back to the parents who abandoned it - is another tale commonly told - Red Riding Hood to Hansel and Gretal. In each there's a curse or an antagonist that they must elude or resolve. Hence the view that stories are about survival. But I always saw that as just one possible analysis. Most of the tales have a moral at the center. But Rumplestilskin is harder to pin-point - for the greedy King marries the Queen for her ability to spin gold, the Queen lies and bribes a devilish gnome to do it for her, the gnome asks for their child - something worth more than gold in return. But, here's the thing he provides a way out of the curse. All she has to do is figure out his name. She gets her child back and he'll go away if she can guess his name. Which he in some tales arrogantly and stupidly provides, in others...devilishly does. Just as he offers Snow and Charming a way out in OUAT - your child is your way out.

The recurring patterns in the tales are interesting - the transformative character - both demon and yet helper, the greedy protagonist - who wants a better life no matter the cost (be careful what you wish for and all that), the price - a loss of something worth far more than power or gold or things, and of course the way out.

They've set up OUAT quite well - focusing on the transformative nature of stories. In the past three episodes for example - Henry through the use of a book of fairy tales has subtly transformed his birth mother's existence, and with her entry into his world and story - she performs a transformative role as well - transforming each character she meets. First up is her mother - the owner of the book of fairy tales, who introduces the stories to Henry, then John Doe who is woken from his coma by the stories. The stories are transformative as is the characters who use them. By the end of the third episode, Mary M and Emma become roomates, and bond. John Doe is awake and reunited with his fiancee, before he ever met Snow White (who is a transformative character in the fairy tale world as well). Quite a bit has happened in a short space of time.

OUAT appears to be a new, and rather hopeful take on old stories. Reinterpreting them for a 21st Century, with a narrative structure that shows how we rely on tales for hope for transformation, not survival but spiritual transformation..and they are very old stories that have been used in this manner for quite some time. Older than Shakespeare. Told and retold in various guises. Oral narratives that were written down here and there by folklorists like the Grimm Brothers.

>   
>  The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure. The oldest known written fairy tales stem from ancient Egypt, c. 1300 BC (ex. The Tale of Two Brothers), and fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literate cultures, as in The Golden Ass, which includes Cupid and Psyche (Roman, 100–200 AD), or the Panchatantra (India 3rd century BCE), but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literary forms. What they do show is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the Arabian Nights collection of magical tales (compiled circa 1500 AD), such as Vikram and the Vampire, and Bel and the Dragon. Besides such collections and individual tales, in China, Taoist philosophers such as Liezi and Zhuangzi recounted fairy tales in their philosophical works. In the broader definition of the genre, the first famous Western fairy tales are those of Aesop (6th century BC) in ancient Greece.  
> 

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale>

In OUAT - Mary Margaret (aka Snow White) reads fairy tales to her students in the real world of Storybrook, Maine. She does it to instill hope in them, transforming how they see their world and their role inside of it. Henry who takes the tales to heart, requests she read to the coma patient John Doe...the act of reading, of telling a tale that resolves a problem or puzzle...awakens the man, gives him a reason to live - something to cling to. In Once - stories are used as a way to fight the evils of the mundane, the Queen's evil in the real world isn't dire violence, but a sort of iron rule, no one can move forward, people feel regrettably stuck - much as we all do in our own world now - the feeling of no raise, no true love on the horizon, no college, etc...the stories then and now, provide a sense of hope, a way to cope with the world. It's what stories are for actually - going all the way back to the Story of Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or Abraham or Moses...fill in the blank, they provide us with a means of coping and understand the world around us. They are, simply put, comforting reminders that we are not alone and someone else has gone through this too. From Mary Margaret's incredibly bad date and wandering home to her deserted apartment, or Emma Swan sleeping in her car, or John Doe waking up to a wife he doesn't know...and we're told he walked away from due to an argument. Henry clings to the fairy tales - he escapes to his wooden castle on the beach, and lives in that world..thinking if only we could waive a wand, we'd all be there too. He transforms his world with the stories in his hands.

Stories can change us. They can provide light in the dark. They can give us nightmares. Make us see things differently. Pull us inside another mind for just long enough to see the world differently enough that when we reemerge...we are in a sense reborn, renewed. Much like the characters in the Once Upon a Time tale are transformed by falling from the fairy tale world into our own and then hopefully fall back again. Once also comments on what memory means and how it defines who we are - how we perceive ourselves and our own identity. But it does so with hopeful look and within the whimsical glance of a fairy tale.  



End file.
